In a further attempt to grab back some of the ground lost to Apple, Nokia also announced it was opening an applications store. From May, the Ovi store will allow Nokia users to download a plethora of applications such as Facebook, MySpace, maps and even Lonely Planet guides.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the mobile phone operators on whom Nokia relies to get its phones into consumers' hands will accept the Finnish company's attempt to muscle in on their relationship with customers.

The world's largest mobile phone manufacturer also unveiled two new smartphones, which it hopes will take the use of mobile email beyond business users, an area which is dominated by bitter rival RIM with its BlackBerry.

The first phone, the E55, looks rather like Nokia's answer to RIM's successful BlackBerry Pearl as it also sports a keypad which has two letters per key to make the phone smaller. It also has a 3.2 megapixel camera and will be available from the summer for €265 (£237). The phone, which is essentially an update of Nokia's critically successful E71, is expected to be free to customers willing to take a contract.

"I believe it is going to really introduce mobile email to a whole new generation of users," said Kai Oistamo, Nokia's executive vice-president of devices.

The E75 has a slide-out qwerty keypad and will be available from next month for €375. It is also expected to be free with a contract.

Sony Ericsson, meanwhile, unveiled its latest phone, codenamed Idou, which has a mammoth 12.1 megapixel camera, making it the most powerful camera phone on the market by just 0.1 of a megapixel. The touchscreen phone should be available in the UK by Christmas.

A powerful camera is also one of the attractions of Samsung's new Omnia HD touchscreen phone, which was also unveiled at Mobile World Congress. As its name suggests, the phone, available in the UK in the spring, can support HD films. Its 3.7 inch screen is an active matrix organic LED (AMOLED), which uses less power than a traditional screen but has startling resolution and a remarkably wide angle of vision.

Samsung also announced a new music phone. The BeatDJ is a departure from Samsung's "candybar" handset design in that it has two curved ends. It is supposed to look like a DJ's record decks because the phone includes technology developed in conjunction with hi-fi experts Bang & Olufsen that allows users to "scratch" tracks using the touchscreen as a turntable. Users can add samples and record the results or listen to them on the handset's stereo speakers, also developed with B&O. The Beat Disc, meanwhile, includes a slide-out keypad.

Business features

Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC, meanwhile, used the show in Barcelona to update two of its more recent phones. The Touch Diamond 2 builds on the original Diamond model released last year but integrates the touch interface fully with the device's Windows mobile operating system. Out next month, the phone has a larger touchscreen than its predecessor and a 5 megapixel camera.

HTC also unveiled the Touch Pro, which has a host of business-oriented features, including the ability to phone the sender of an email merely by tapping the email. The touchscreen phone, available in the summer, also switches into speaker-phone mode when placed face down on a table.

Much of the innovation showcased in Barcelona is being driven by a desire to compete with the iPhone. Since its launch in the summer of 2007, Apple has sold over 17m, but it is not just the device that has shaken up the industry. Giving users the chance to download widgets and personalise the device has shown there is a huge demand for easy-to-use applications from consumers.

Rival handset manufacturers and the network operators themselves - even O2, which has the iPhone exclusively in the UK - are opening their own applications stores to try to retain the link with consumers.

Nokia has been particularly desperate to hit back at Apple, and its executives were particularly pleased to announce the opening of the Ovi store.

Nokia believes its store goes one better than iTunes as it takes into account the location of the user. So, for instance, a Nokia user arriving in Spain would be recommended a Lonely Planet guide on the area they are visiting, and perhaps a phrasebook and maps.

Nokia's "relevancy engine" also recommends potential new applications based on what a customer has used in the past and allows people to see what their friends have downloaded.

"The store is different," said Nokia executive vice-president Niklas Savander. "It is not just a place to find applications, it's familiar, it knows you. It recommends applications to you, it adds a social location dimension ... it's a smart store."

"This is the next generation, this is the new benchmark," he said.

The first phone to have the Ovi store embedded will be the N97, to be released in June. But when the store opens in May, a number of existing models will have access to it. Nokia is hoping that over 300m handsets will be linked to the Ovi store by 2012.